Catching Up: London

After a week's hiatus, I am back to re-cap London.  We had a truly lovely time for a quick weekend in London.  I find London to be huge and overwhelming - similar to how I feel about New York City.  Being able to break our visits into these short breaks where we can focus on a specific location of the city has been great.  This has given us time to explore these neighborhoods and not feel too rushed.  We are very fortunate.

This time, we centered our trip in London City Center.  Our hotel was right near the Tower of London and a lovely friend (thanks Christine) had given us tickets to the London Eye.  So these are very high on our list of things to do.  We also managed to fit in a walk across Tower Bridge, a visit to the HMS Belfast, and a trip to Brick Lane for Indian food (aka Curry Mile).  Below are a few of my favorite snaps from the weekend:

Our visit to Tower of London was awesome.  It was so much more than the crown jewels (though seeing those was pretty spectacular!): 

London Tower Guards (those hats seem like they would give you a headache, right?):

We took a water taxi down the Thames River to the London Eye:

We ended the day on Brick Lane (aka London Curry Mile) with some amazing Indian food at Sheba:

The next day, we took an excellent tour of the HMS Belfast and learned how the British Navy worked in the 1940s - 1960s - much cooler than anticipated - a museum is built directly onto the boat:

We finished the day with some lunch and a trip to the empty market where they filmed Harry Potter's Diagon Alley:

Three cheers for a chilly, but awesome trip to London: